I’m still relatively new to working in open source communities. My first taste of community came over a year ago when much of my time was spent working within the Sakai community. I’ve since become more involved with uPortal and other projects. My main priority since the Fluid Project was launched in April has been to help foster a vibrant community around user experience design and UI development. It’s been an amazing and eye-opening experience.

The thing I have been most pleasantly and repeatedly struck by since we started the project is the level of contribution and commitment from volunteers and newcomers. It’s been amazing to see how many people have shared their talents with the project even in these early days, and I’m very grateful for everyone’s help. Fluid is a unique community in that it is intentionally diffuse and cross-cutting; we exist to help improve the user experience of other open and community source projects. My goal is to make the Fluid a place where contributions from non-technical and technical people are valued and reflected equally within the community. So far, I’ve been amazed to see how many people have helped out in big and small ways!

The most recent source of impressive volunteer generosity is Louis Suarez-Potts, who is the project coordinator for OpenOffice.org. We had hoped to welcome Louis as our new project manager for the Fluid Project, but his deep commitment to the OOo community prevented us from hiring him away. Despite this, Louis has volunteered to help me and the community define a shared project road map in his spare time over the next few weeks. Louis has a lot of experience in helping to launch open source communities, and I’m very grateful for his offer of help. Thanks to Louis and everyone else who has been able to help out with the project so far!

If you’re interested in getting involved in the Fluid Project, take a look at the Get Involved page on our website. Please feel welcome to join the mailing lists and introduce yourself to the community.